Dispensing consistent, controllable, and accurate amounts of fluid of varying viscosities remains an issue for product manufacturers and suppliers. For example, for product manufacturing, it is important to reliably and accurately dispense adhesives to ensure high quality and structural integrity of the end product. Herein the end product may be virtually any assembly where adhesives are used to secure parts of structures together. The range of products is broad, e.g., airplane assemblies to audio systems, furniture, housings, packaging, etc.
In instances where dispensers are distributed at widely diverse geographic locations, quality control of the end product may be difficult. For example, control of diverse fluid adhesives having widely diverse viscosities and with no post dispensing dripping is no easy task. Uniform, high quality, world wide dispensing is an important competitive advantage.
In dispensing adhesives and like fluids, the term “dot” or “bead” refers to the form factor of a quantity of fluid dispensed and “fluid” refers to liquids or suspensions or other such materials that react as do materials that fit the common definition of a fluid e.g., water. “Dot” refers to a single, stand alone quantity of fluid, while “bead” refers to a continuous, dispensed strand of fluid. In each case the quantity dispensed is important. For example when a bead is being dispensed in a curved strand the dispenser must accommodate the dynamic differences compared to a straight line dispensing in order to have a uniform bead.
The location of the dot or bead being dispensed on the work piece relies on positioning equipment that controls the X-Y position of a work piece or manual abilities with a dispensing gun that are well known in the art and will only be incidentally referenced herein.
Production facilities using adhesive dispensers are being locally established world wide in many technical fields. Having widely spread dispensers, each individually operated with little knowledge of their operations may result in uneven quality and competitive disadvantages. Regardless of geographic location, precise (repeatable) and accurate dispensing of adhesives is crucial to the assembly of the products. For example, the quality of dispensing adhesives in Mexico and dispensing in the U.S., or anywhere else in the world, should all be high quality.